Now I'm working on editing it (since a lot of it is in shorthand as a result of me frantically clammering away at the keyboard while repeatedly listening to the audio recording of our interview) and putting together Jared's pages in Blurb. Needeless to say, he definitely has the most page space of all the interviews I've done thus far (6 amazing pages!!). I would shorten it, but all of the info is so strong, and it's interesting, so I feel that people won't get bored while reading it.
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What are your thoughts on what “body modification” actually means?
Altering the body for any reason whatsoever. Plucking eyebrows, trimming your nails. Anything even as miniscule as that could be considered modification. Pretty much anything to change the appearance, shape, anything at all, to alter the original appearance of the body. Even shaving is modification.
How did you first get interested in/involved in body modification?
I blame my parents. I wasn’t raised on toys, cereal, cartoons, things like that. I was told to study culture. Different cultural shows on National Geographic always very much appealed to me, there was a special on the Hindu Kavadi that showed actual flesh pulling and suspension rituals that I saw when I was like 12. That sort of threw me into what I do. I was in awe; looking at it, seeing people pulling against it, being yanked back. I didn’t know what to think of it, but I knew that was pretty much what I wanted to do.
What is your position in the body modification world?
I’m known as a body piercer, suspension practitioner, a collector. I’ve written off and on for different magazines, been on tv specials mainly for suspension. People recognize more so for a suspension artist than a body piercer.
What do you enjoy about being a piercer and suspension artist?
What I love about it is that I can live by my own set of rules. I don’t have to answer to any higher-ups about it. It’s not like I have to worry about getting fired for a hair being out of place. If I decide to alter something on my body, it’s not going to be a job stopper. I mean, I already have facial tattoos, and I’m covered in pretty much all the places that tend to be taboo. Like, “You can’t get a job having this,” and here I am, contrary to that belief. It’s about me being able to be free, being able to live well. I’m financially stable, and I can look however I want. That’s one thing I love about it. And I love to see people’s faces when I’ve given them exactly what they want.
What jobs did you have before becoming a modification artist at Evolved?
I became an apprentice at the age of 16 and started actually working as a piercer at 17. I also had an internship when I was 12, working at a concert hall. I was that little kid who was always at the concerts and wanted to help out, so they put me on a stage doing hand work, office work, eventually got into setting up my own concerts and shows. And from there I got offered an apprenticeship with someone I had let into a show. I got to interview bands, I wanted to get into piercing, and it kind of went together.
What is your favorite modification that you have?
Oh God, I really don’t know. I could tell you there are definitely things I don’t like. Things get in the way with the hand implants; I mean they’re something I love, but now they’re more of an irritation. Not from people looking at it, more so from heavy hand washing, glove changes, skin cell regeneration, having your hands dry out, sometimes crack, having something like that is like having extreme dishpan hands all the time, especially being a piercer in a high volume shop. It can be a pain.
What was your first mod?
My first modification was getting my nose pierced at a very, very early age. We’re talking in the 80s, when I was 9 years old. Everyone wanted their left ear pierced – I got my right nostril pierced. It was just contrary to what everyone was seeing. Everyone was saying, you get your left ear pierced, you’re straight. Ear piercing was an accepted thing, it didn’t apply to the nose I guess. People were like, “oh my God, he has his nose pierced at an early age.” I mean even teachers kind of flipped out.
So were your parents supportive of that?
My mom was kind of against it in the beginning, but she was the one who kind of put me on the path by telling me to study cultures. She told me to live a certain way, to not conform to how everyone else wants you to be. But at the same time, when someone tells you to not be like everyone else, that person is also trying to get you to conform to how they want you to be.
I was a little bit too much of a free spirit early on. My mom hated some of it in the beginning. Then she started to see where I was going, started to open up to it a bit more. I mean, she was a hippie, very open minded. My step dad unfortunately didn’t see it that way. He was very straight by the books, but then at one point, after he and my mom divorced, he was calling me up, trying to get me to invest money with him, because he saw that what I was doing was quite lucrative. It’s like, no. First, you didn’t like what I was doing, but now you want me to invest money that I’m making with something that you didn’t support? Sorry, no. That’s like the US government saying, hey let’s team up with a big drug dealer and have them fund us even though we’re trying to bust them.
How do you participate in the body mod culture aside from being an artist?
In the past I used to do a lot more. I traveled to most of the tattoo conventions around the US and performed. I used to teach for PPIS, which is Pro Piercing Information Systems. That’s propiercing.com. Used to have different classes pertaining to scarification, branding, male and female advanced genital piercing. I used to help with a suspension course, which was a lot of fun. I’ve written articles before. I’m a piercer on a daily basis. As far as the traveling and performing, not so much anymore, because it can be a pain in my ass, and I really don’t like dealing with unscrupulous promoters. A lot of times, people don’t understand what you’re missing out on by doing an event, by missing work, the money that it takes to travel to these events, and not to mention what you’re putting your body through for people’s entertainment.
So is there a general limit on how often you can safely do suspensions?
There is, but then there isn’t. There are safe limits of giving it a couple weeks sometimes if you’re doing a suspension, but then again I’ve suspended 5 times in a week before during a small tour. Sometimes your body will eventually smack you and tell you to slow down because at that point, you’ve done so much to your body that your immune system is a little out of whack, and it takes your body a little while to recover from it. Doing too many suspensions in a short amount of time can actually make your body a little less healthy. I mean you’re constantly healing wounds, your body has been drained of so many endorphins. You’re constantly putting yourself through a new form of trauma.
What is your personal philosophy about being tattooed? Do you get things done on a whim or do you prefer to plan it out?
In the beginning I was very gung ho. I started getting tattooed and pierced heavily at the age of 16. By the time I was 18, I had inch and a half holes in my ears, a half-inch septum, pretty much full sleeves. At that point, I was like, get it on me and let’s get it over with. Let’s get shit going, get as much covered as I can, do as much as I can. Now, what’s the reason for it? It’s really not a race. Over the last probably 7 or 8 years, I’ve really kind of mellowed out. I’ve had a lot of facial piercings in the past, and I’ve taken a lot of it out. I’ve come to realize that less is more. The less stuff you have on your face sometimes can be a little bit more appealing. Sticking with certain things that can add to your features, not trying to look like you went off in front of a land mine. Stick with a few things that can accentuate you and that would look good on your body, and work with them. Enlarge them a bit, or something. As opposed to just, “let’s put this here and this there.” And pretty much everything I do on my body has to be symmetrical in some sense. If I get something done on one side, there has to be something to balance it on the other side. Not saying that my tattoos are always exact replicas on each side, but both arms have full sleeves. If I get an ear piercing, it has to be matched on the other side. If it’s in the center, then it’s perfectly balanced already.
How would you describe the experience you have when you’re being tattooed, pierced, or otherwise modified?
As far as the process? Like sitting through it? Sitting through a tattoo, sometimes I hate it. Just depends on where it is on the body. It can be the most excruciating thing, but sometimes even going into a second session in the same area can be one of the more enjoyable things, to where it doesn’t bother me at all. As far as living on a day-to-day basis, I can experience anything from loving everything I have done to hating society as a general whole for trying to chastise me for everything I’ve done, when I’ve done nothing to them.
You used to have your lobes stretched at a pretty large size for a while, and then had them reversed recently. Is there a particular reason for that?
There are multiple reasons that lead up to it. In the beginning, I started stretching because I liked the way that it looked, but I had no target size so I just kept going and going. It wasn’t any race back when I started doing it; it was more of a uniqueness thing. It wasn’t like, hey I’m racing someone to get bigger lobes, or saying, so and so has them this big so I want them this big, or I wanna go bigger than them. I was really the only one doing it in Vegas. Well there were a few, but I was pretty much the only person actively pursuing it, just going as large as I could. I don’t know why, I just wanted that look. And it took something that I actually loved and embraced for so many years and never would’ve ever thought of getting rid of, until I moved into certain cities where I was chastised for it. I had people tell me that it was absolutely disgusting. I had people grab at them, and violating personal space is one of the big no-no’s for anyone, I think.
I was at a tattoo convention, some girl was drunk, came up and stuck two fingers through my ear lobe. I was standing there with the promoter, and I said, “Why’d you do that?” And she was like, “Well it’s just there.” And I was like “Cool, well while you’re here, why don’t you bend over and let me stick two fingers in one of your holes?” And she was utterly upset by it; she couldn’t understand why I would say something like that to her. Ya know, I’m usually a mild mannered person, but I was trying to get her to understand how she had violated my personal space. At that point, I considered she practically raped my face. She basically violated me. You’ll see t-shirts nowadays that’ll have a big red circle and a dash through it with an earlobe saying, “Please do not stick your fingers through my ears.” It has become something that has irritated a lot of people and in essence a good portion of the industry has been getting their earlobes reversed because of stuff like that, where people are getting too grabby.
I also hate being the poster boy for all these 16-year-old children. Everyone’s trying to be the modern primitive, trying to be the cool person with the big earlobes. Guess what, it’s all been done before. Go with it moderately, it’s not a race. Are we in a race, to fuck ourselves up? It shouldn’t be like that. That’s where I was coming from when I was younger, but now I’m older, and I don’t look at it that way. Take your time with it; don’t be in such a hurry. A lot of times, when you hurry it, you can have bad consequences, whether it’s getting cut off from future employment, not knowing where you really want to go yet, to being cut out of a family will, and even just down to fucking yourself up physically.
How do you react to people who view your modifications as “disgusting” or don’t understand them?
I’ll smile and I’ll nod at them, because everybody’s entitled to their own opinion. But I’m quite saddened by people who do that, because first off, you’re taking everything that’s been done for thousands of years and you’re brushing it off like a modern technology. Well, what happens when you lose grip with the past? It’s constantly repeated. By holding on to certain aspects of the past, you’re able to keep certain traditions alive, able to keep certain models of spirituality alive. Have a common knowledge of where we’ve started off and how far we’ve come as a society. Unfortunately, we’re the black sheep. People embrace us as being on TV or sideshow performances, but when it actually comes to getting to know someone one-on-one, they’ll talk to you in person and say that they’re all about it, then they say to someone else, “That’s disgusting.” People are trying to fit the mold of how they appear to other people, how others picture them to be. So a lot of times, people may be really interested in it or fascinated by it, and they’ll take an absolutely nasty standpoint about it, because they feel that they’re going to be chastised for it. Same thing with people coming out of the closet from being gay – people can be so homophobic toward a person, and sometimes the people who are so negative about it, actually are gay. They’re trying to fit an image of what society has deemed them to be.
Is there anything else about body modification that you’d like to share?
It’s not a 9 to 5 job. It’s not a scene. It’s not something to try to be a part of, it’s the way you live your life. From waking up in the morning to going to bed at night, it’s how you run your day, it’s the person that you are. You’ve become the person you are by the steps you’ve taken and paths you’ve chosen to follow. It’s about respecting other people and the choices they’ve made about their own lives, and hoping they would do the same for you.
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